Kang, Nayoung. 2015. “A sociolinguistic study on the structural properties and sociocultural meaning of pun and speech play in Korean young children’s peer talk”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 23(1). 1~30. This paper examines the use of pun in a Korean preschool classroom from the perspective of sociolinguistic study. The purpose of this research is to describe and analyze how Korean young children learn and speak their peer talk and cultural theme in regard to forms and meaning of pun and speech play. For this study, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork for one year at a Korean preschool, focusing on intensive participant observation of teachers’ and children’s interactions, supplemented by in-depth interviews with teachers and children. Through the analysis of social interactions in classroom, I argue that 1) the structural properties of pun(sound patterns, lexicon, syntax, and pragmatics) and 2) sociocultural and interactional meaning(performance, pun in class, taboo as sexuality and curse) in various forms of everyday talk.

• 강나영(부산대학교) | Kang, Nayoung